Influencer goes off the rails

The 23-year-old German fitness influencer Sammy Baker, whose official name was Samuel Seewald, died on 13 August 2020 after being shot by police in Amsterdam-Nieuw-West, in a courtyard near Honselersdijkstraat. He had travelled from Germany to Amsterdam with friends to celebrate his birthday. According to reports, he visited a coffeeshop, used cannabis and ate space cake, after which he became confused and paranoid. When he did not return to the hotel, a friend reported him missing. His mother then travelled to Amsterdam to search for him. On 13 August, Sammy was seen in Nieuw-West, but when an officer tried to approach him, he ran away. Later, according to the Public Prosecution Service, he was in a confused state in a courtyard with a knife held to his throat. When officers tried to arrest him, he allegedly made swinging and stabbing movements with the knife toward several officers. Two officers fired almost simultaneously, and Sammy Baker died. In 2021, the Public Prosecution Service decided not to prosecute the two officers, because it concluded that they had acted in self-defence. The case remained controversial afterward. Sammy Baker’s parents, Kai Baker and Justine Seewald, argued that their son was psychotic and in need of help, and that the police should have handled the situation differently. There was also debate about statements by Amsterdam police chief Frank Paauw, who had said shortly after the incident that an officer had been stabbed in the vest by Sammy; later reports stated that forensic examination did not find knife damage to the vest consistent with that claim. In a later expert report by police sociologist Jaap Timmer, prepared as part of a civil procedure, media reported that the police had partly created an unsafe situation themselves and that mistakes had been made in the approach and command of the operation. The police, however, continued to point out that the Public Prosecution Service had concluded after a Rijksrecherche investigation that the officers acted in self-defence and therefore were not criminally prosecuted. In September 2023 the research collective Forensic Architecture concluded on the radio programme Argos that Seewald was not in a threatening position and that police conduct in the minutes before his death aggravated rather than de-escalated the situation. On 19 January 2024 his parents filed a criminal complaint against the officers involved for manslaughter, grievous assault resulting in death and death by negligence, asking for a prosecutor from outside Amsterdam. On 16 September 2025 it emerged that they had ended their civil case against the police with a settlement, the terms of which were not disclosed. On the criminal side they are pressing on with an Article 12 procedure at the court of appeal to force a prosecution of the officers. In 2026 the fight moved to the civil courts. On 14 April 2026 the parents brought urgent proceedings against the Public Prosecution Service at The Hague district court, because the prosecutors' website continued to state that Sammy had swung a knife and struck an officer on his protective vest. They pointed out that three forensic examinations by the prosecutors themselves show the vest to be undamaged, that the officer concerned says he was not struck and had changed his statement, and that the knife was a seven-centimetre pocket knife. They lost those proceedings and in June 2026 appealed against the ruling that let the text stand.